This past April, parents and residents from across my Central Pennsylvania school district gathered to protest a looming school board decision. Many of the attendees congregating in the administration center had never participated in a school board meeting before. Yet with the future of our school district’s well-being on the line, they could not remain silent.
The decision at hand was a rather routine one: the replacement of the school district’s solicitor. But the board’s newly elected conservative majority, emboldened by a secretive meeting with a controversial law firm and willing to suspend the district’s policy to take action, chose to appoint their hand-selected replacement in dramatic fashion. In this case, the district’s new solicitor did not even possess experience in education law — the core requirement for the job. The public, and even several school board members, were kept in the dark until the decision had effectively been made.
Actions such as these have become a trend across Pennsylvania, with a growing list of school districts hiring conservative firms such as the Independence Law Center for legal counsel.
Ever since that April meeting, residents from across the political spectrum have voiced their wide-ranging beliefs about the district’s policies and approaches to contentious cultural issues. Many have lost faith in the school board after this ill-advised solicitor appointment. As one parent expressed, “If you don’t have trust, how can you know your kids are going to be safe?”
Through this abrupt change, the new board majority had already burned bridges and sowed distrust just months into their tenure. Still, many of the conservative residents who elected them remain dissatisfied, continuing to echo certain national conservative groups’ disdain for inclusive school policies: most recently, changes to Title IX that prevent discrimination on the basis of gender identity.
The election of this new school board majority is the result of increased voter turnout in a swing district that is already as contested as can be. Three of the new majority members won their seats by just two percentage points. Moreover, the frequent participation of many parents at school board meetings points to an unprecedented level of local political engagement, especially post-pandemic.
Stripped of context, such engagement would appear to be a sign of democracy at work. Unfortunately, it points to something more dangerous than apathy: the influence of national “culture wars” over issues such as LGBTQ+ inclusion, selection of library materials, and the discussion of racism in K-12 education. These politicized battles detract from the school board’s primary purpose of meeting local students’ academic and resource needs, instead catalyzing costly legal challenges and needlessly harmful school policies.
A Mobilized Public
It is no secret that school board meetings have seen larger and more invigorated audiences ever since the Covid-19 pandemic. Parents yelling and screaming at school board meetings have made headlines across the country, leading many to characterize local school boards as the newest partisan battleground.
In April 2020, the National School Boards Association issued a report detailing the lack of contested candidates and voter turnout in most school board elections. For years, this level of disengagement was unfortunately the status quo. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 election cycle, turnout has been on the rise ever since. In my own county in Pennsylvania, voter turnout in school board election years has risen from 25% of registered voters in 2017 to 37% in 2023. As of now, there are no signs that turnout is leveling out.
While not every state is experiencing the same drastic changes in school board elections, the engagement of my home district reflects a national trend. Ballotpedia reported that recalls of school board members from districts around the country jumped from 20 in 2019 to 92 in 2021. These numbers have only recently fallen now that voters have taken action at the ballot box.
One Size Does Not Fit All
School board elections were not always the concerns of national politics that they have recently become. The meetings have traditionally been rather boring affairs; moments of intensity have emerged mostly from contested local issues rather than national conversations. When I watched school board meetings in years past, my friends would laugh at my idiosyncratic curiosity. Now, more and more residents are tuning into the meetings, but usually not because they are fascinated by the district’s personnel adjustments or revisions of small budget items.
Underpinning the rise of public interest in school boards is a surge of momentum from coordinated, national campaigns. As school board elections have become more hotly contested and politicized in recent years, state legislatures have statutorily transformed school board races into partisan affairs, and coordinated campaigns have designed blanket instruction manuals for change.
Moms for Liberty, a conservative organization founded in 2021 that boasts nearly 115,000 members in 45 states, advances a mission of “unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.” The organization has endorsed hundreds of candidates across the country since its founding, especially in battleground states like Florida and Pennsylvania. Moms for Liberty has mobilized parents who seek greater involvement in discussions around race in the classroom and policies targeting LGBTQ+ students, for example.
In response to the election of conservative majorities on many school boards, progressive organizations such as Run for Something and Red Wine & Blue have endorsed candidates of their own, seeking to rival the electoral efforts of Moms for Liberty. Several school board candidates, conservative and liberal, have received millions in collective campaign funds from national PACs in recent years. Citizens are increasingly paying attention to their school boards, but that attention is being driven and bought by national organizations with their own political agendas.
In a hotly-contested 2023 school board race in the Central Bucks School District, a coalition of Democratic candidates flipped the conservative board. The race consumed nearly $600,000 from PACs and large donors nationwide.
Extreme spending also continues on the legal front. Central Bucks School District was forced to spend nearly one million dollars in legal fees over allegations of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination in schools. In other cases, even when the school board itself is acting in the best interests of the students, parents have engaged in politically-motivated lawsuits that cause just as much damage.
Last year, my own district, the West Shore School District, settled a $40,000 lawsuit with conservative parents over objections to the Character Strong social-emotional learning curriculum. The program, which the district said was implemented to teach children empathy and kindness, was an anti-bullying measure that occasioned one parent’s headline-worthy assertion, “Not every human is deserving of my child’s empathy.” In expensive cases such as these, school districts lose money that could have instead funded important educational programs.
Intensive national endorsements and exorbitant spending battles testify to the recent spiral of hyper-politicized school board races. In order to avoid what they perceive as dangerous losses, organizations must spend once-unimaginable sums to secure local candidates’ victories. This back-and-forth of politically charged school boards is an unsustainable climate for districts and their students. The rash decisions by many board members to implement discriminatory policies and consult politically-motivated advisors only exacerbate the burden.
In addition to financial burdens, countless school boards have spent meetings waging minimally relevant culture war battles rather than paying attention to the immediate educational needs of the district. Scripted monologues about issues such as “critical race theory” produced by national groups will not solve the issues of school safety, bullying, inequity, teacher shortages, and stifled achievement. Instead, policies such as book bans and discriminatory restrictions on bathroom access create atmospheres of fear and division in the places where students should feel safest and most included.
There is certainly a place for national interest in how we educate, protect, and empower students from all backgrounds. For example, in early 2020 a group of moms across the country successfully lobbied for gun safety policies in schools and communities, demonstrating the potential power of national movements in implementing valuable, school board-driven reforms. Unlike the politics of school board elections today, however, these reforms were implemented as the result of many town halls and deliberations at the local level. They stemmed from the deliberation of concerned school board members and proactive parents who successfully made the issue local.
While national movements hold the potential to benefit schools, it is crucial that school board members are principally concerned with their local communities, which is where the problems and solutions in our education system actually take effect. When school board members and parents prioritize their national affiliations of any nature above the students in their own district, they are prone to make underinformed and overly reactive decisions.
The Path Forward
The national politics of school board races will not cease without resistance. The Heritage Foundation’s infamous Project 2025, a conservative manual for governmental change that has seen many of its proposals implemented in Trump’s first weeks as president, highlights the role of parents in fighting against “critical race theory” and “radical gender ideology.” Moreover, the House GOP in 2023 exacerbated the political battles over curriculum by passing the Parents Bill of Rights, modeled on similar bills in 24 states. Six of these states have already implemented these measures, which aim to restrict the teaching of racism and gender identity.
Unfortunately, lamenting the political gamesmanship in our school board races will not make the problem go away. Although the headlines often paint a picture of hopelessness, there is a path forward: harness this newfound political engagement into a force for good in our schools.
Recent elections show signs of voter fatigue from extreme political candidates. For example, only one-third of the candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty in 2023 won their races. Ultimately, every parent wants a say in how their kids learn, but many are beginning to realize that it does not take the implementation of extreme policies to achieve this.
Now is the time to bring school boards back to strictly local affairs. It is time to end the system of partisan school board elections in Pennsylvania, which is one of only a handful of states to require party labels in these races, and to prevent states like Florida from veering further into extremism.
Most importantly, school board members and voters alike must recognize that good governance is often very boring; contrasted with the recent theatrics of national politics. Instead of chasing the dramatics of the spotlight, Americans who care about their schools should participate in the committee and board meetings where decisions about budgets, local taxes, and hiring are actually made.
Moving forward, we must transform cookie-cutter battles over curriculum into discussions of how to best utilize literature dealing with sensitive subjects such as race and gender identity. Through our policy decisions, we must treat every student, especially those who are so often marginalized in our education system, with the empathy and respect they deserve.
If parents and students work to collaboratively channel their passion into dialogue, we can shape our schools into all that they can and should be: places where we prepare every student to enter the world with knowledge, confidence, and kindness.
